Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, is considered a notoriously plaintiff friendly forum. Accordingly, plaintiffs clamor to bring lawsuits in Philadelphia County. Petitions contesting the convenience of the forum, however, are routinely denied. If the “convenient forum” is an adjacent county, the likelihood of moving the case is slim to none, even upon a showing of good cause. An attractive alternative is removing a case to federal court based on the diversity of citizenship. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania pulls jurors from a much larger area, which can significantly level the playing field.
If a case does not involve a “federal question," to establish federal jurisdiction there must be complete diversity of the parties ie the plaintiff must be from a different state than each defendant. If plaintiff and even one defendant are from Pennsylvania, the case cannot be removed. Until recently, the trend in the Eastern District has been to allow plaintiffs to avoid a finding of diversity even where it obviously should exist. In a recent case, Cipriani & Werner successfully challenged this trend.
In Green v. Starbucks, Plaintiff initiated a negligence suit against Starbucks, a Seattle corporation. The cause of action stemmed from an accident at a store in Philadelphia. Without more, the case would have been ripe for removal to the federal court in that there was complete diversity among the parties. Plaintiff attempted to avoid federal jurisdiction by suing the corporation and the local store manager. As a result, complete diversity was seemingly destroyed.
Despite this blatant attempt to avoid federal court jurisdiction, it is the defendant who must demonstrate that the joinder of a non-diverse resident was fraudulent. The defense must demonstrate that plaintiff joined a party “with no reasonable basis in fact or colorable claim against the joined party or no real intention in good faith to prosecute the action against the party." Until recently, it was practically impossible for the defense to survive remand against the standard that only a "possibility" need exist that a state court would find the complaint states a cause of action against the non-diverse resident to warrant remand of the case to state court.
Despite plaintiff having named the Starbuck's store manager as a party-defendant, C&W, removed the case to the Eastern District and then survived a motion to remand. It did so by breaking through what has otherwise been an impervious plaintiff-friendly case law precedent from the Eastern District, flushing out the ambiguities as well as contradictions in the prior court precedent.
What It Means to You
Because venue in Philadelphia County can adversely affect the value of any claim, our office aggressively attempts to move cases out of Philadelphia County whenever possible. As shown in Green, however, this is not always an easy task, and is complicated by the fact that improper removal could result in the awarding of costs and attorneys fees to the Plaintiff. Not surprisingly, the Green matter is on appeal. Due to C&W's efforts in Green v. Starbucks, we believe we have created a foothold for future success in the removal area. The attorneys at each office of Cipriani & Werner are always looking for ways to maximize our client's position in each case we handle. We will continue to pursue such strategies with like enthusiasm to make the above success the rule.